An elderly man walks in to Lodge Grass Hardware on a weekday afternoon, intent on settling up his account. 

Sixteen year old Rae Dawn Ten Bear is there to greet him at the counter. “How much would you like to pay?” she asks, filling out a receipt.  “A hundred, cash?  Okay, your balance is… let's see… $357.” In a town of few businesses, and fewer teenage cashiers, Rae Dawn is a standout.  She has grown up so fast.

She sips black coffee (“It's been a long day”) and directs incoming calls with the ease of a polished receptionist.  Speaking on the surface, discussing her loving Christian family, it's hard to fathom the pain buried in her soul. “Without my new family, I'm sure I'd be dead by now.” 

Rae Dawn Ten Bear

Rae Dawn Ten Bear speaks the truth, whether it's revealing her grim past or reveling in her brighter future.  Her mom calls her a “prayer warrior,” for her gift of preaching  God's word on the meanest streets she can find.

Rae Dawn sees herself as a spiritual bridge between the deepest despair and the highest hope. She's been on both sides.  Her birth mother gave Rae Dawn to the state when she was two months old.  “She loved alcohol more than she loved me,” Rae Dawn says of her mother.  “She couldn't give it up for her other three kids, so when it came to me, she just gave up.”

Rae Dawn bounced around a few foster homes before landing with Keith and Dana Bartlett in Lodge Grass.  She was three years old.  The Bartletts have taken in 81 foster children over the past 19 years.  They have guardianship of eight, including Rae Dawn.  While broken families fall apart around them, the Bartletts have built a foundation on Christian values. “I wish my friends had the experience and the love that I have had with this family,” Rae Dawn says.  “They've given me every opportunity to succeed.”

Along her journey to make her parents proud, Rae Dawn uncovered deep feelings of rejection by her birth mother about two years ago. “Her depression was hidden from us.  It was all inside,” says Dana Bartlett.  “She started sneaking out at night.” “I was suicidal.  I became a cutter,” says Rae Dawn, rolling up her sleeves to reveat cut marks near her wrists.  “It was my way of balancing out my emotional pain with physical pain.”

A recent church mission trip to South Dakota brought everything to the surface.  I thought, ‘God can't really use me if I'm all bitter.  I had a war with myself, and I made a conscious decision to forgive my birth mom.”

Rae Dawn is now on her own mission—to build those bridges—to help other cultures relate to the “oppression, the racial issues, the poverty” on the reservation. “Normal middle class people who live in the suburbs, they're always protected,” Rae Dawn says.  “They don't understand why people on the street can't give up being junkies or alcoholics.  They don't realize that people on the street don't have hope.”  Rae Dawn has offered a ray of that hope, sharing her testimony at Hip Hop Church at The Castle Youth Center. “She's just anointed,” says Dana Bartlett.  “She gets up and speaks the truth.  It gives me chills.” She's unafraid, having conquered her deepest fear.  Bold from all the life she's lived in 16 short years.

Rae Dawn Ten Bear — prayer warrior — is uniquely prepared for the long walk ahead.